Russian billionaires Oleg Deripaska, Leonid Mikhelson, Sergey Gordeyev, Mikhail Gutseriev and other businessmen are giving fictitious jobs to volunteers who are going to fight in the Ukraine war, the independent investigative project IStories found out.
IStories talked to Igor Sergiyenko (call sign Shershen), a platoon commander fighting in Ukraine in the Sokol volunteer battalion (part of the 108th Airborne Assault Regiment). Sergiyenko’s monthly salary consists of two parts: the Defence Ministry pays him 200,000 roubles (€2,000) under the contract, and another 100,000 rubles (€1,000) are provided by his sponsor.
IStories discovered that the phone numbers that Sokol lists for those wishing to join the battalion belong to Rusal Management, a 100% subsidiary of Rusal, whose main owner is Oleg Deripaska.
Here’s how IStories describes the scheme these companies use to supply mercenaries for the Russian army:
- Rusal employs volunteers in companies associated with Deripaska, such as Ruslan PSC.
- The next day, the volunteer signs a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defence.
- The employment agreement is suspended, enabling the company to pay ‘bonuses’.
- The contractors are sent to the Sokol volunteer battalion, which is actually part of the Russian army.
This scheme was recounted by a recruitment officer who believed that the IStories reporter who talked to him was a potential recruit.
Deripaska himself is under Western sanctions, but Rusal, whose managers are now recruiting mercenaries for the Ukraine war, was exempted from sanctions after Deripaska reduced his stake in the company.
Rusal told IStories that it is not involved in the operations of volunteer troops and knows nothing about the use of its phone numbers by other organisations.
IStories claims that the same recruitment schemes are used by Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko’s gas producer Novatek, Mikhail Gutseriev’s construction company Mospromstroy, and Sergey Gordeyev’s PIK, Russia’s largest property developer.
An IStories reporter posed as a volunteer asking recruiter Andrey Vasiliev if he could “get a job through Novatek”. The recruiter said that this was possible, saying that additional payments (200,000 rubles a month to go with the official salary from the MoD) would be made through the Muzhestvo charity foundation.
There is only one charity foundation with this name in Russia, and it was registered in September 2022. Almost all donations that Muzhestvo received in the first three months of its existence (over 200 million rubles, or €2 million) came from Novatek, IStories writes.
A day earlier, the investigative project Proekt published a piece detailing how at least 81 businessmen from Forbes’ pre-war rating of the richest Russians have openly been involved in supplying the Russian army and the military-industrial complex.